This is my first post and first installation with linuxMCE. I've finally got a working copy of 810b2 installed (via DVD) on a hybrid after a lot of pitfalls by following instructions on the wiki (which seems to have a lot of outdated information), and searching through the forums to fill in the holes. I've noticed several things that are still not quite right like menu popup misalignment, multichannel analog not using rear surround sound speakers (4.1), among others, so I still have a ways to go.

The most frustrating thing that I can't seem to find any information on in the wiki/forums is the seemingly featureless video player that I am using to play DVDs. I installed the libdvdcss2 and w32codecs packages which enabled dvd playback, but the default player seems to be wholly lacking in features and I'm wondering if something is wrong. Instead of something like this:

with controls, all I get when I play a dvd are "mute" and "play/pause" buttons and a cross-hair style cursor. I am not using an orbiter, so I am relying on the on-screen controls (my single hybrid has the video out connected to a projector and i control everything with keyboard and mouse), so this is extremely inadequate. Maybe with an external orbiter there are more controls. If I hit F1 there are some context menu buttons like "off", "menu", and if I hit the pause button with my mouse there some HUD info appears, like a timeline and play speed, but I am not able to click on fast forward or rewind or control the stream in any way. Is this something particular to my install or is this what the new version is supposed to look like and the on-screen orbiter controls are this lacking? I'm trying to install videoLAN via the admin page, but is there any other way to easily get another player in there? I saw some posts about mplayer, but not one that explains how to get it in there.

Also, when it was just the kubuntu without LinuxMCE, I could fire up mplayer and play DVDs and control everything with no problems, but if I am in the orbiter and select the KDE desktop and try to play a DVD the video comes in fine, but the sound seems to never pump through. So now I'm stuck with no controls or no audio...

If anyone has experienced this or knows how to fix my problem I would be most grateful. I gave up on trying to fix it tonight and just ripped the video cable out of the hybrid and plugged it into a laptop to play a movie...

which seems to be someone experiencing a similar issue with the onscreen orbiter, but then the thread diverges a bit. In using the onscreen orbiter as my sole interface am I SOL in terms of the full linuxMCE experience or can I do everything with the onscreen orbiter that I could do with a separate orbiter? If there are keyboard shortcuts associated with various controls for the video player, etc, please point me in the right direction. I saw some keyboard shortcuts on the web admin page, but couldn't figure out what all the numbers meant...

Zephyr Not sure if anyone has answered you or not. I have found that f6 on the keyboard brings up the FF RW triangle square thingy. With which moving your mouse left and right on the square moves it to the bottom of the screen and from there the "location" bar with the FF and RW speeds controlled by how far you move the mouse to the left and right respectively in the "location" bar thingy. I believe also in the triangle square thingy that Up and down with the mouse controls the audio up and down.

press F6, then mouse up/down or left/rightup/down will allow you to scroll through DVD chaptersleft/right gives FF and Rewind capability, the further away from the centre the faster upto 400 %!

F7 is for Menu:

this will bring the bottom menu's back and allow you to turn your media off, go to menu screen, take thumbnails, adjust aspect ratio and other stuff including all the menus you have when no media is playing

F8 is for Ambience:

Press F8, then mouse up/down or left/rightup/down will adjust the lightsleft/right will adjust the volume (if you are letting LMCE control your vol.)

I am having this same exact problem, and while F6 and F7 do work, my Fiire remote does not! It worked in 710, not sure why this doesn't work in 810. I also had to manually install libdvdcss2 and codecs. I don't normally have a keyboard on each media director, it is going to be a show stopper if I need one in order to stop DVD's! Any idea why the buttons don't seem to work when a DVD is played (the MEDIA/MENU/VOL-LIGHT button on the Fiire remote)?

the fiire remote has some incompatibilities with some things that have changed in the input subsystem in newer ubuntu builds. being that there are never enough developers on this project and the fiire remote is no longer available, other projects have taken a higher priority. in the end, this is an open system and we highly encourage everyone to get involved.as for onscreen ui, it is generally expected that a compatible remote is used (with media control buttons) or a separate orbiter device.

Are you saying you can get things done if you're in charge? Do you even know what is involved with developing this software? Have you looked at our source code tree to see how large it is?

We support what we have access to, very simple. If you need Fiire remote support, the relevant code is in src/Orbiter/Linux/HIDInterface.cpp .. It no longer works due to major changes to the underlying kernel which causes the hid and hid_gyration device to improperly grab the device for itself and prevent libusb from using it. The fix is to uncomment the rmmod hid.. lines in that file, we do not ship it, because it breaks support for everyone else, quite literally.

So really, your comment is vastly uncalled for, and shows that you are utterly uninformed, and that really, you should just keep your mouth shut.